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Comment by johnplaxton | Hacker News Reader

Then why does he say "teach your girlfriend" rather than teach your partner, or teach your friend, or teach someone? If the fact that it is his girlfriend is just his situation, why suggest that I teach my girlfriend in the title?

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I make no claims that the post is a good one, or that its title is particularly apt. In fact I think its a bit vacuous, a better title could have been "I'm young and in love and I'm amazed to have found someone I can share my geekiness with and I want to tell everyone about it". Unless you know the guy personally there's not much point to reading it, but I'd say there's also not much justification for inferring sexism.

Is that a throw away account ?

But anyways, because some other person who happens to be a man and is in a relation with a person that happens to be a woman may feel like teaching her some basic programming and a title that ports this situation to a possible reader elicits a stronger connection. That and "How a humam should teach another human partner how to program" would be very daft.

On twitter, he says that he thinks gender neutral language is boring. You seem to have the same opinion. I'm sorry that including me as part of a potential audience is boring to you, and yes I find that sexist.

You are purposely finding sexism in that. When people on HN use female pronouns as gender-neutral "... CEO ... she ..." I don't immediately assume only women are capable of that position. And when they write "he" I don't assume that women are incapable.

You are part of the potential audience, the girlfriend in the article is meant to represent every non-programmer (male and female) and he is meant to represent every programmer (male and female), and you full well know that. You are being ridiculous by asserting that everyone who doesn't write in the style you prefer is sexist.

I think it was a stupid article, but the only part remotely close to sexism was where he only described male programmer friends.

I didn't agree with anything anyone said on Twitter. Sorry, but you are mistaken on that opinion you believe I share. Don't know why you would go about imagining that I am aligned in any way to anything that I did not read. Also, there is nothing wrong with gender neutral language, it just doesn't apply to something that is told in the first person. If you find that to be not inclusive enough for you ande a standard to judge what you read, that is your own inner workings. It will just make you loose out on a lot of great books. Either way, others don't have to externalize the same things or put up with your labeling, that would be very odd.

I didn't say you specifically agreed with what he said on Twitter. I categorised your suggestion that using gender neutral language would be 'daft' together with his idea that it would be 'boring'. If you want to, go ahead and explain why these are such different ideas that I should not have done so.

The article wasn't written in the first person, it was written as instructional and in the second person (I vs you). Writing in the second person is generally an attempt to connect with an audience. Language choices such as using gender neutral pronouns and references can be made to connect more or less with different audiences, and this author rejected them because it wasn't worth it to him. I do not like his decision not to bother including me as his targeted audience. If you don't like that I don't like that, well that is your own inner workings, why does it bother you so much when I want to be included?

Why do you feel so excluded? I feel quite capable of empathising and responding to written content whatever the distribution of genders. One of the joys of consuming human culture is letting yourself be put in the position of others, whether or not (or maybe especially if) they don't match your gender. The fact that the guy was teaching his girlfriend was an important data point to him, its part of the piece, but no need to feel excluded.

I said it was daft in the context of his recount. You seem to miss important parts and move the goal posts a lot there and the passive agressive reuse of others language and the cherry picking stuff ain't my thing at all, so I will leave you going at it alone. I do not wish to engage at that level at all.

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